Firms flounder as the IT talent pool grows ever more shallow

May 15 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

Technology firms across the North East are having to look abroad for skilled staff. Andrew Mernin finds out why.

WHERE are the techies, asks Annabel Cornish, an IT boss based in Newcastle. The managing director of internet consultancy ZebraHosts has all the ingredients to drive her rapidly-growing business forward except for one vital ingredient – people.

Her quest to fill technical vacancies has received such a poor response in the region that she is about to widen the net and bring in staff from outside the North East.

She said: “With high-profile redundancies at companies like Northern Rock and Atmel, we thought now would be an opportune time to increase our technical support and recruit good, skilled people from the North East.

“If we don’t get a response locally, we are going to have to widen our search outside the region. We’ve been reluctant to do that as we wanted to support our local workforce, but if they’re not out there, we have no other option.”

Ms Cornish is not the only IT boss pulling her hair out at the lack of skilled technical staff in the region.

A number of North East business leaders have expressed their concern at the skills epidemic in the wake of a major new survey.

A report by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) found that six out of 10 employers are having difficulties recruiting graduates for technical positions.

The CBI survey, which questioned 735 UK firms, revealed that the falling number of graduates with science, technology, engineering and maths qualifications is fuelling a skills shortage.

Director-general John Cridland said: “A worrying number of employers have little confidence that they will be able to plug their skills gaps. In our new stocktake of the nation’s skills, too many firms also say poor basic skills are hampering customer service and acting as a drag on their business’s performance.”

Larger firms are increasingly looking to India, China and Eastern Europe to bridge the shortfall in UK skills.

Meanwhile, the research also showed that more than half of employers are concerned about their staff’s inability to use computers.

In the North East the problem looks set to worsen as the region’s buoyant IT sector continues to grow, meaning there are fewer skilled workers to go round.

Phil Renton, managing director of Newcastle-based Croft Technology, said: “I think the problem is relentless. We don’t have a problem with retention, it’s with recruitment.

“All the IT companies are holding on to their staff so there’s not as much movement and if everyone’s fishing from the same stream, then there’s less fish to go round. We used to have group recruitment sessions where six people would turn up, but now we get one person per one job.”

Naomi Jackson, digital skills manager at Codeworks, the North East’s centre for digital innovation, believes the skills shortage has been caused by booming technology industries:

She said: “The CBI, e-skills UK and Chinwag Jobs have all warned that the UK is facing an IT skills shortage.

“It’s worth noting that one of the reasons that companies are struggling to find such staff is due to the fact that growth in the digital and IT sector has exploded over the past five or 10 years.

“The North East in particular is home to one of the nation’s fastest-growing digital sectors outside London. There are hundreds of employers in the region’s digital sector, and thousands of good jobs. Its growth shows little signs of slowing, despite talk of a slowdown or even recession in the wider economy.

“Our region is also home to universities that are producing some of the brightest IT and digital talent in the UK. Codeworks’ graduate and student placement schemes address the issue of halting the brain drain of talented students and graduates to elsewhere in the UK and keeping them in the North East to work within the region’s thriving digital industries.”

PAGE TWO: London's digital industry is a big draw.